


come home

by hoarmurath



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Gen, Post-AMoL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 12:44:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8980264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoarmurath/pseuds/hoarmurath
Summary: The Dragon Reborn burned with a high fire, they say. Flew into the sky with the fire, and gone he was. (UAF Secret Santa fic for glittersessa)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glittersessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glittersessa/gifts).



> Hi! 
> 
> Tam decided he wanted to tell this little story. 
> 
> Happy holidays!

Life goes on.  
  
Even after the destruction of the Last Battle, all the death and suffering, life goes on.  
  
Rumors and news come to Emond’s Field, travelers speaking of what they have witnessed. Familiar faces, and strangers as well. Tidings of joy and word of loss.  
  
No family has been left untouched.  
  
His son is dead.  
  
The Dragon Reborn burned with a high fire, they say. Flew into the sky with the fire, and gone he was.  
  
They have stopped offering for a ceremony, even though weeks have passed. Tam knows he should give them all the ease, the end of wondering. He should send off his son, for he is already gone.  
  
He thinks of it when he goes to sleep alone. The next morning, he will speak of it. He will end it. He promises himself. However, the mornings come and go, and his mouth cannot shape the words. Cannot say:  
  
_My son is dead._  
  
All the world knows of it, from Land’s End to over the Dragonwall, but he cannot say the words.  
  
He is not alone at the farm. These days nearly always someone comes over. Either Abell or some of the boys, a few strangers willing to work the field for a place to sleep and a meal to share. They talk little. Mostly of the future. There is time for plans now. The world can stand still.  
  
Sometimes he goes to the inn and sits there with a cup.  
  
They greet him as they pass, but none come to sit with him. For all their loss, they still have someone to cling to. Widows find companions, orphans find mothers and sisters to keep them near. There are many empty beds now, and even as the farms around the Field empty, the village growing tighter with one another, they are still not entirely filled.  
  
He knows Marin is of half a mind to speak to him. To ask him to put himself out of that misery, the misery they share, but she does not.  
  
And so he does not say the words.  
  
Days pass by, from scalding summer to a cold autumn.  
  
Few guests now. They would rather not make the whole way up to his homestead, not in these weather. Thunder above the hills and rain ready to drench even a proper cloak.  
  
He makes his way to the Field in the morning, with trades to make and news to listen to.  
  
He returns in the early evening, but as he nears the door, he grows still.  
  
Hard gained instincts do not flee fast. They stay, even if he’s been only a farmer for the last twenty odd years. Even then. Someone is in the house. Fool enough to make their way in, clearly. He ought to see who it is. They have the odd bandit come here sometimes, thinking the farther away farms easy pickings. So far they have been shown otherwise.  
  
Tam pulls his knife from his belt, walks over to the door with an easy silent step, peers inside.  
  
There, at the crackling fireplace, sits a man.  
  
Darkhaired, longlegged, familiar.  
  
“Who might you be? I do not leave my door open just for anyone.”  
  
The man looks at him.  
  
He has not seen this man even once in his life. Yet, he cannot help but to think he ought to remember him. Not a threat, he thinks. Not for lack of skill, but for lack of ill intention. A man intent on doing him harm would likely not light the fire and plant himself on a stool right in front of it. Just sitting there. As if he were home.  
  
“It is me,” the man says and stands up.  
  
Tam has a mind to say some more pointed words, but then the stranger gives a laugh as if to himself.  
  
“I mean, it is me. Rand.”  
  
“My son had red hair,” Tam blurts out.  
  
How would anyone think he is such a fool to take a stranger for his own son? He can feel his anger grow, the anger he has managed to keep at bay for all this time.  
  
“I did,” the man says. “But after what we did, I was dying. My body was. I did not want to die. I wanted to come back.”  
  
He has such blue eyes, like a winter sky.  
  
“So you…took someone else’s body?” Tam asks, horrified at himself for even entertaining the delusion.  
  
How could it be? His son has done many impossible things, but surely this is too far.  
  
“Yes. And you keep the spare key in the hollow of that tree which was struck ages ago. I am sorry I could not come earlier. It…took time.”  
  
Now that he looks for it, listens for it…the man does speak like his son. Stands like him, like he did when they saw one another the last time. He does.  
  
“It is you?” he asks.  
  
The man nods, then smiles.  
  
“I am happy to see you, father.”  
  
Perhaps that convinces Tam in the end. Perhaps he is simply very foolish and any phantom of his son is enough. Tam asks him things, questions only his son could answer, and the man answers them. The man who smiles like his son.  
  
Some part of him has known all along. Has refused to speak the words, for he knew in his heart of hearts that they were not true. But a man’s heart is a small thing against the world, and the whole world has told him for months that his son is dead and gone. But he is neither.  
  
“Come here,” Tam says, puts the knife away.  
  
It is odd to embrace him, someone different. Different reach, finer hair, another smell. Strange, but not bad. Not bad at all.  
  
“I missed you,” Rand says very quietly into his ear. “I missed you very much. I did not want to go just yet. I want to live.”  
  
To live for his own sake, not for the fate of the world. No longer.  
  
“You are home now,” he tells his son.  
  
And in his heart the words:  
  
_My son is alive._


End file.
